I read several works on Law and Government, including Puffendorf's Law of Nature, Grotius on the Laws of Peace and War, Bodin on Government, Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, Blackstone's Commentaries, and Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium. I had read works on Anatomy, Physiology and Medicine, when I could get hold of them, from the time when I was only twelve years old. I never went far into any other sciences, yet I studied, to some extent, Astronomy, Geology, Physical Geography, Botany, Natural History, and Anthropology. I read Wesley's publication on Natural Philosophy, and I gave more or less attention to every work on science and natural philosophy that came in my way. Works on natural religion and natural theology, in which science was taught and used in subservience to Christian truth and duty, I read whenever I could get hold of them. They interested me exceedingly. For works on Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, I had not the least regard. They seemed to have no tendency to help me in the work in which I was engaged, and I had no desire to talk respectable nonsense on such subjects. I was fond of Ecclesiastical and Civil History, and read most greedily such works as threw light on the progress of society in learning, science, and useful arts; in freedom, morals, religion and government. I read many of the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the history of the wonderful periods in which they flourished. I was especially fond of Cicero, Seneca, and Epictetus. All subjects bearing on the great interests of mankind, and all works revealing the workings of the human mind and the laws of human nature, seemed to me to bear important relations to religion and the Bible; and the writings of the great philosophers, lawyers, and historians, appeared to be almost as much in my line as Baxter's Christian Directory, or Wesley's Notes on the New Testament.